About

CA$ 7,696

pledged of CA$ 6,000 goal

202

backers

In ancient Rome, an augur read futures in the flight patterns of birds. Now, Augur Magazine believes the stories we tell today are important to the futures we’re moving toward—and we want to make space for the stories and futures we need.

We are excited by writing that is difficult to classify: dreamy realism, surrealism, magical realism, slipstream, and literary scifi-fantasy/speculative fiction. Our goal is to bring together disparate genres, always exploring what-ifs and could-bes. We focus on publishing work by intersectional creators—especially emerging ones—and while we’re not refusing submissions from those who don’t identify as intersectional, we will always dominantly feature visible minority, disabled, queer, trans, female, and otherwise marginalized voices. Moreover, as we foster an international basis for submissions we'll always reserve spots for Canadian and Aboriginal/Indigenous creators.

This kickstarter will empower our first two full years and at least six issues of carefully curated content. That means more than 40 genre-skipping, intersectional pieces delivered straight to our subscribers’ inboxes.

Alongside doing good editorial work and producing a fabulous digital magazine, we pledge to provide those who work with us a humane, respectful submissions cycle; editorial work with a focus on listening and learning from our authors and readers; and a business model that puts our creators first. Across our editors and masthead, we are queer, trans, women of colour, immigrant, and disabled/neurodivergent. When we say that we want intersectional work, we mean it, and we’re motivated to bring together as many voices as possible within our publication.

Want to check out what we do? We put together our Preview Issue so you can see what we’re about. The content is available for free online, or you can get a fully designed, PDF ebook by contributing to any level of our campaign!

A cross-genre collection of work encompassing dreamy or unsettling realist literature; magical realism and slipstream; and literary scifi-fantasy

Bridging the space between literary fiction magazines and speculative magazines

A focus on actively searching for, making room for, and publishing intersectional voices

Regularly publishing new and emerging voices

Seeking out Indigenous and Aboriginal authors and creators

Adding a new paying market for Canadian speculative fiction while fostering a welcoming environment for the international spec community

Always working from a place of respect, listening, and learning

Directing the bulk of our funding towards creators and artists

$6,000 — Our first two years are funded. We’ll pay $50/story, $25/flash fiction piece, $20/poem, and up to $75/graphic fiction short. That means we'll publish at least 40 creators, and we’ll also hire our artists to produce more beautiful illustrations for Augurian pieces.

$8,500 — Our issues will be 33% bigger, meaning we’ll publish over 50 creators over two years. We’ll also give small honorariums to an otherwise volunteer slush reader team.

$12,000 — Print Anthology! We’ll add a beautiful print anthology to our Year Two lineup, featuring reprints from our online publications and pieces from an extra submissions cycle. And that’s not all—everyone at the $50 level and above will receive the digital copy of this anthology, and will have the option to receive the print copy absolutely free (well, after shipping ;) )!

$15,000 — We’ll pay our creators 25% more than their original payments AND we’ll send supporters at every level some behind the scenes content as we create our print anthology.

$20,000 — We’ll pay our creators 50% more than our original payments, bring our per-issue creator count to 12 (meaning more than 60 creators over two years), and publish serial fiction on our blog. AND, on top of everything else, we’ll run an annual prize for intersectional authors, with NO entry fee, and offer $500 in rewards per year. Because screw appropriation prizes. We want a #WeNeedDiverseBooks/#OwnVoices prize.

To show we put our money where our mouths are, we've already produced our first issue—the Augur Preview Issue, a collection of reprints from a variety of magazines. The content of the Preview Issue is available online on our website, and you can get a fully designed PDF by backing us at any level.

Take a look at our Table of Contents:

"The Man Who Killed Coen" by Lawrence Stewen (originally published in The Spectatorial)

"Change as Seen Through an Orrery of Celestial Fire" by Michael Matheson (originally published in Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen)

Want to read before you back us? Click here to go to the Preview Issue online site.

Think we're the kind of magazine you could see yourself taking home to mom? Fabulous! That's exactly why we've prepped a huge variety of rewards for our backers to choose from. Our backers can get:

Digital PDF copy of the fully designed Preview Issue

Single Issues & Subscriptions to Augur Magazine

Electronic Swag (Desktops, Augurian Hero Banners)

Thank yous & being listed on our website and in our magazine

Query, short story, and novel reviews

Half page ads in Augur

Physical swag (Bookmarks, post cards, tote bags, t-shirts, etc.)

Limited edition print copies of the Augur Preview Issue Zine

Art prints

The original canvas paintings of Ann Sheng's Fantastic Landscapes series, produced for the Augur Magazine website

Handwritten thank you letters from our editors

As a stretch reward: The digital copy of the Augur print anthology + the option to ship a free print copy straight to your door

See below for a selection of the swag* up for grabs! Including the physical Zine, the digital preview issue, our original canvas paintings and a selection of bookmarks and other assets!

Your augur kickstarter swag!

Rewards will begin being delivered in November 2017 or sooner. The first piece to be delivered will be the Augur Preview Issue, and we'll release regular updates for the remaining rewards on your tier.

*Final design subject to change

The majority of our funding goes directly into the pockets of our creators and contributors. An approximate breakdown is that 70% goes into the creation of our issues, while 10% goes to kickstarter fees and 20% goes to the administrative & marketing budgets that let us exist!

Risks and challenges

The biggest risk we have is that it's hard to run a literary magazine these days. Funding is sparse, and survival is a matter of luck as much as it is anything else. We plan to combat this with planning in the long term—like kickstarting for two years instead of one, so next time we need funding we'll meet the qualifications for national grants. It helps that our editors are in publishing, marketing, and law, meaning that we're made up of the core pillars that put together any good literary endeavour—and we'll use our professional prowess to ensure Augur survives come hell or high water.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 75 or more
About $60

Writer's Query Review + Subscriber Pack

Get all the perks of a 2-year subscription package, and you get to have one of our two former literary agency assistants (Kerrie Seljak-Byrne, Anna Bendiy) tear your query letter apart. We'll give you a substantive letter, one revision with feedback, and line edits.

And, if we hit $12k, you'll get the digital ebook of our anthology and have the option to pay for shipping to get the print edition free!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 100 or more
About $80

Lifetime Augurian Superhero Pack

Backers at this level are lifetime Augurians and get all the perks—welcome, friends. And, if we hit $12k, you'll get the digital ebook of our anthology and have the option to pay for shipping to get the print edition free!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 125 or more
About $100

Writer's Short Edit + Subscriber Pack

Get all the perks of a 2-year subscription package, and one of our editors will do a deep dive into one of your WIPs (up to 6000 words). We'll give you a substantive letter, one revision with feedback, and line edits.

And, if we hit $12k, you'll get the digital ebook of our anthology and have the option to pay for shipping to get the print edition free!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 250 or more
About $200

Writer's Novel Edit + Subscription Pack

You get our 2-year subscription pack, AND one of our editors will give you a full novel manuscript review (up to 100,000 words). This includes general substantive edits, stylistic recommendations, and an editor's letter, but not copy editing or proofreading. Please note when purchasing that we are best suited to the genres we publish.

And, if we hit $12k, you'll get the digital ebook of our anthology and have the option to pay for shipping to get the print edition free!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 300 or more
About $240

Patron of Augurians Art+Subscriber Pack

You're the patron we've been waiting for. For you, we've reserved the original paintings we have stored away of Ann Sheng's Fantastic Landscape series for Augur Magazine. You'll get one of the pieces on canvas; a swag bag; all the lifetime perks; and a personalized thank you letter from our editors.

And, if we hit $12k, you'll get the digital ebook of our anthology and have the option to pay for shipping to get the print edition free!